Jannetje Johanna Schaft was born on 16 September 1920, in Haarlem, a city in northern Netherlands. As a child, she went by Jo. Her mother was a devout Mennonite, while her father taught school. When the little girl was seven, her older sister Anna succumbed to diphtheria. Her parents were exceptionally protective of her as a result.
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Jo’s father was a member of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and politics was a common topic of conversation around the home. When she came of age, Jo enrolled in law school intending to become a human rights lawyer. While studying law she developed friendships with several Jewish students. In the late 1930’s with persecution of the Jews on the rise across Europe, Jo felt energized to support them.
The World Goes to Hell
The Germans seized the Netherlands in 1940 as part of the overarching Operation Fall Gelb (Case Yellow). Thus began a brutal occupation that stretched until the country was finally liberated by the Allies in 1945. For five long years, the Germans as well as their Dutch collaborators tirelessly battled resistance forces. Jannetje Johanna Schaft found herself right in the middle of all of that chaos.
In 1943, the Germans demanded that university students sign a declaration of allegiance to the Nazis. Jo refused, as did roughly 80% of her fellow students. She was subsequently ejected from school before graduation. Jo then moved back in with her parents in Haarlem. However, she brought two of her Jewish university friends along with her and hid them from the hated occupiers.
The Law Student Goes to War
Now with a little time on her hands, Jo sought out the Resistance. Once established, she was given the codename Hannie. She became known for her fiery red locks.
Hannie started out small, stealing ID cards for her Jewish friends and working as a courier. However, in short order she developed a proclivity for wet work. Hannie’s true calling was sabotage and assassination. Lots of folks talked about killing Nazis. Hannie Schaft actually did something about it.
Her weapon of choice was a Browning M1922 pistol in .380ACP. Trim, reliable, and concealable, the FN M1922 saw widespread distribution both within the Underground and as a service pistol among Nazi forces. Hannie Schaft put hers to exceptionally good use.
You Never Forget Your First
Hannie’s introduction to the dark, shadowy world of targeted assassination was remarkable. After training in basic weapons maintenance and marksmanship, she was assigned her first live hit–the targeted killing of a local villain rumored to be an SD officer. As part of a two-person hit team along with a fellow Resistance operative named Cor Rusman, Hannie made her approach to the target. When the time was right, she presented her handgun, leveled it at the man, and squeezed the trigger. Next came a sickening click. The weapon was unloaded.
The SD man then calmly introduced himself as Frans van der Wiel, the commander of the local Resistance cell. Hannie had passed her test. While she had clearly demonstrated her dedication and willingness, she was furious about having been put through it. However, she was now cleared for field ops.
Schaft Had Many Superpowers
Over time, Schaft learned to speak German fluently. She cultivated relationships with Nazi soldiers so as to get closer to her targets. She and her young female friends would put on bright red lipstick and frequent local watering holes looking to pick up German soldiers. They would feign drunkenness and then invite the men out into the woods for a little off-the-books fun before cutting them down and stashing the bodies. Being an attractive woman is like having a superpower. Hannie Schaft used hers to kill Nazis.
Time has muted the extent of her operational history. Nobody had time to keep detailed records. However, her personal tally was nonetheless impressive. She was eventually spotted at the site of one of her hits and reported to the authorities. No one knew her identity, but her appearance was distinctive. The Nazis subsequently placed, “The Girl with the Red Hair” on their most-wanted list.
No Shortage of Business
On 21 June 1944, Hannie and a fellow Resistance shooter named Jan Bonekamp undertook the targeted killing of a Dutch police officer collaborator named Willem Ragut. Hannie shot the man in the back with her .380ACP Browning. However, Ragut returned fire, striking Bonekamp in the gut before succumbing to his wounds.
Bonekamp’s injury was lethal, but he survived long enough to make it to the local hospital. There he inadvertently identified Hannie to Nazi sympathizer nurses after they claimed to be with the Resistance. The Nazis were unable to locate Schaft, but they arrested her parents and dispatched them to the Herzogenbusch concentration camp near Den Bosch. The trauma of these events pushed Hannie underground for a time. Miraculously, her parents were safely released after two months.
Schaft and Her Next Level Killing
From this point forward, Hannie dyed her hair black and tried to be careful. She helped plan the killing of a collaborator policeman named Fake Krist in October of 1944. On 1 March 1945, Hannie and Truus Oversteegen killed another Nazi policeman named Willem Zirkzee.
Two weeks later they wounded Ko Langendijk, a local hairdresser who worked as an informant for the German SD. Langendijk survived both this attack and the war only to be sentenced to life in prison for supporting the Nazis during the occupation. However, by now Hannie Schaft was developing a well-earned reputation.
Catastrophe
Hannie Schaft was arrested at a German checkpoint on 21 March 1945, for illicitly distributing an illegal communist newspaper called de Waarheid (“The Truth”). In reality, the paper was just her cover. She was actually actively moving secret messages for the Resistance. The newspaper thing was incriminating, but was not the sort of infraction the Germans automatically just flat-out killed you over. Hannie was remanded to a German-run prison in Amsterdam for interrogation and torture.
Hannie successfully resisted her captors’ efforts to extract information. However, over time her hair inevitably grew out. When the Germans recognized her red roots they knew they had finally captured the master assassin Hannie Schaft. Though the war was just weeks from ending, the Nazis decided that Schaft must die.
Hannie Schaft: Defiant to the End
On 17 April 1945, two Dutch Nazis named Mattheus Schmitz and Maarten Kuiper transported Hannie to the dunes of Overveen near Bloemendaal on the direct orders of Willy Lages. Lages headed up the SD in Amsterdam during WW2 and was a proper monster. The young firebrand Resistance fighter was only 24 years old at the time. The two turncoat Dutchmen forced Hannie to kneel, and Schmitz shot her in the back of the head at near-contact range. What happened next made Hannie Schaft a legend.
Many of the compact service pistols used by the Germans and their minions were pathetic little .32-caliber pocket guns. In this case, the round deflected off of Hannie’s skull. She then purportedly turned to her executioners and said, “Ik schiet beter!” This translates to, “I shoot better!” Kuiper then stepped forward and killed the woman with a burst of fire from his submachine gun.
The Aftermath
There is no record of Mattheus Schmitt ever having been prosecuted after the war. However, Maarten Kuiper and Willy Lages were both brought up on charges for war crimes. Kuiper was sentenced to death and executed in 1948. Lages was similarly sentenced. However, in a profoundly controversial move, the Dutch Queen Juliana refused to sign his death warrant. His sentence was commuted to life in 1952.
Lages was eventually freed in 1966 due to poor health. His release sparked widespread public protests. Lages eventually returned to Germany where he died of natural causes in 1971.
Ruminations
The Bloemendaal dunes where Hannie Schaft died was the location of a large number of German executions during the war. Once the dust settled, Dutch authorities exhumed the bodies buried there. They found 421 men and one woman–Hannie Schaft. She was re-interred with honors at a ceremony attended by the Dutch Queen and her husband.
Hannie Schaft’s reputation waxed and waned through the years. Queen Juliana unveiled a large bronze commemorative statue in her honor in the Kenau Park in Haarlem near where she was born. She was posthumously awarded the Dutch Cross of Resistance as well as the Medal of Freedom by General Eisenhower. However, she was also an avowed communist. During the Cold War, veneration by the Dutch communist party took the shine off of her exploits.
Hannie Schaft Legacy
Tens of thousands of Dutch communists visited Hannie’s grave until 1951, when such celebrations were forbidden. One event had to be broken up by several hundred riot police backed up by four tanks. It was a weird time.
Eventually, with the Cold War won and communism in decline in the Netherlands, interest in Hannie Schaft’s exploits was kindled anew. Books and movies about her life followed. There is now an annual event staged in Haarlem in her honor. The last Sunday of each November is set aside as a day of remembrance in the Netherlands for Hannie’s life, work, and martyrdom.
Unlike movie depictions, killing at close quarters is reliably hard. It requires resolve, nerve, technical skill, the right tools, and no small amount of raw unfiltered hate. Hannie Schaft had all of these in abundance. In her brief life and gory death, we see resistance personified. At a time when she could have simply stood aside and let the war pass her by, Hannie took up arms and killed Nazis. She was a patriot of the highest order.
Massachusetts cannot make a Second Amendment lawsuit disappear simply by issuing carry permits after it has already kept lawful citizens disarmed for months.
That is the central takeaway from a federal judge’s refusal to dismiss the core claims in Lawson v. Campbell, a lawsuit brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners Action League, and three nonresident gun owners challenging Massachusetts’ burdensome License to Carry process.
Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Casper allowed the plaintiffs’ as-applied Second Amendment claim and their Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection claim to proceed. The decision is not a final ruling that Massachusetts violated the Constitution, but it is a significant procedural victory that moves the case toward discovery—and forces the Commonwealth to defend how its licensing system actually operates.
Massachusetts may call its system “shall issue.” According to the lawsuit, however, the state’s one-year nonresident licenses, recurring delays, and refusal to provide a renewal grace period leave lawful gun owners unable to carry for extended periods year after year.
That is not a minor administrative inconvenience. It is government-imposed disarmament.
One-Year Permits and Months of Waiting
Massachusetts treats nonresident gun owners far more harshly than its own residents.
A resident License to Carry can remain valid for six years. A nonresident generally receives a temporary license lasting only one year. Both are charged a $100 application or renewal fee, meaning a nonresident may pay the same amount every year that a resident pays once every six years.
New nonresident applicants must also appear in person at the Firearms Records Bureau in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Applicants face background checks, fingerprinting, training requirements, and other bureaucratic demands before receiving government permission to exercise a right protected by the Constitution.
Massachusetts law generally requires a licensing authority to approve or deny an application within 40 days. The state’s own website reportedly warns nonresidents that processing may take as long as 90 days. The plaintiffs allege even longer delays.
Brian Burns, a Florida resident who maintains a home in Massachusetts, has held at least four nonresident licenses. According to the complaint, one timely renewal was delayed so badly that his new license was not issued until nearly six months after the previous license expired.
Christopher Penta, a New Hampshire resident who frequently travels into Massachusetts for work and family visits, has maintained a nonresident license since 2018. He alleges that one renewal was issued almost two months after his existing license expired.
Russell Lawson Jr., a New York resident who owns a Massachusetts hunting cabin, applied for his first nonresident license in January 2025. His earliest interview was scheduled for June. Lawson missed that appointment because of an unexpected work obligation, and the state rescheduled him for October. Officials subsequently requested information concerning an undisclosed out-of-state charge. He eventually received his license in March 2026.
Although Lawson’s individual application involved additional complications, the court found that the plaintiffs collectively alleged a recurring licensing problem sufficient to keep the lawsuit alive.
Late Approval Does Not Erase the Injury
Massachusetts argued that the case was moot because the individual plaintiffs eventually received their licenses. Judge Casper rejected that position.
The court recognized that sufficiently long licensing delays can themselves constitute constitutional injuries. A citizen who cannot legally carry a firearm for self-defense while Massachusetts sits on his application has lost the exercise of that right during the delay. A permit issued months later cannot restore the days when he was forced to travel disarmed.
The judge also found that the delays could qualify as “capable of repetition, yet evading review.” Nonresident licenses must be renewed annually, the individual plaintiffs intend to continue traveling to Massachusetts, and Burns and Penta allege that they have already experienced recurring renewal delays.
Massachusetts cannot run out the clock, issue the permit after a lawsuit begins, and then claim there is nothing left for a federal court to review.
That point reaches beyond this case. AmmoLand recently covered similar permit-delay litigation involving the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Anti-gun jurisdictions lost their ability to demand a special need for self-defense after New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Bureaucratic delay cannot become the replacement for the discretionary carry bans that Bruen struck down.
Second Amendment Claim Moves Forward
The court dismissed the plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the Massachusetts licensing system. A facial challenge requires showing that the law is unconstitutional in every application, and Judge Casper concluded that the plaintiffs had not cleared that demanding hurdle.
The as-applied challenge is another matter. The judge found that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged delays extending well beyond Massachusetts’ 40-day statutory period. When those delays are combined with one-year licenses and no grace period, the system can deprive nonresidents of their right to carry.
The court declined to establish a bright-line rule defining exactly when a licensing delay becomes unconstitutional. It did, however, reject Massachusetts’ argument that only delays lasting 18 months or several years can implicate the Second Amendment.
Most importantly under Bruen, Massachusetts did not identify a historical tradition supporting the alleged delays. The as-applied Second Amendment claim therefore survived the motion to dismiss.
Nonresidents Face Arrest While Residents Receive Protection
The plaintiffs’ equal-protection claim also survived. Massachusetts residents receive a grace period when they submit timely renewal applications. Nonresidents do not. When a temporary nonresident license expires, its holder can be forced to choose between entering Massachusetts disarmed or carrying under threat of arrest and prosecution.
The court found that this alleged distinction could penalize the constitutional right to interstate travel. Because the plaintiffs plausibly alleged an underlying Second Amendment injury, Judge Casper considered the application of strict scrutiny rather than automatically accepting any justification Massachusetts could invent.
The Commonwealth identified its general interest in public safety and verifying applicants’ eligibility. It did not explain why denying nonresidents a grace period—or subjecting them to delays beyond the statutory deadline—was narrowly tailored to serve that interest.
The judge consequently refused to dismiss the equal-protection claim.
Rights Do Not Stop at State Lines
The Second Amendment Foundation correctly described the ruling as a major procedural advance.
“Massachusetts begrudgingly makes carry permits available for out-of-state residents,” SAF Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack said, while making the annual process unconstitutionally burdensome.
SAF founder Alan Gottlieb put the larger principle more plainly: “The Constitution doesn’t know state lines, and neither do our rights.”
AmmoLand has previously warned that forcing Americans to obtain separate government permission from every hostile jurisdiction they might visit turns interstate travel into a legal minefield. Massachusetts’ treatment of nonresidents has already produced extensive litigation, including the cases discussed in our earlier coverage of the Commonwealth’s cross-border carry restrictions and its supposedly reformed nonresident licensing system.
The court also dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim under the Article IV Privileges and Immunities Clause. That loss and the dismissal of the facial Second Amendment claim should not be ignored. But neither changes the importance of what survived.
A permit does not create the right to bear arms. The right existed before Massachusetts imposed its application, fee, fingerprinting, interview, and annual renewal requirements.
When the government prevents a qualified citizen from carrying for months, the constitutional injury occurs during every day of forced disarmament. Massachusetts will now have to defend that conduct instead of burying the case under a stack of late-issued permits.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy.
Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment record has never looked stronger. Yet that strength rests on a five-vote majority, and a growing bloc of Democrat leaders has said out loud that they want to change the math by adding seats to the Court. If they succeed, the doctrine protecting your right to keep and bear arms could be rewritten faster than it was built.
That is the plain reason court packing matters to gun owners. The decisions that anchor modern gun rights are strong today because of who sits on the bench. Change the roster, and you change the outcomes.
What Heller, Bruen and Wolford Actually Established
To understand what is at stake, you have to understand what these rulings did. In 2008, District of Columbia v. Heller confirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right held by Americans generally, not a right tied only to militia service. Two years later, McDonald v. City of Chicago applied that right against the states. Then in 2022, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen set out how courts must judge gun laws.
Bruen created a two-step test. As one SCOTUSblog analysis explains, step one asks whether a challenged regulation restricts conduct covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment.
If it does, step two shifts the burden to the government to show the regulation fits “this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” If the government cannot meet that burden, the challenger wins. This approach rejects interest-balancing, which is the practice of weighing whether a law is tailored well enough to serve a modern policy goal. The test asks about history, not present-day preferences.
Wolford v. Lopez pushed back on a creative attempt to work around all of this. The Court struck down Hawaii’s presumptive ban on carrying firearms on private property open to the public without the owner’s express permission.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing in concurrence, warned courts not to “smuggle additional limits, drawn from our regulatory tradition, into the plain-text stage of the inquiry.” Doing so would flip the burden of proof onto ordinary gun owners and let the government off the hook. Wolford also confirmed that the Second Amendment sets “a uniform national standard” that does not shift from state to state. The “spirit of Aloha,” as the Court put it, could not shrink the right inside Hawaii’s borders.
Why This Regime Looks Secure Right Now
On the current Court, these rulings sit on solid ground. That SCOTUSblog analysis describes the “Heller-Bruen regime” as “here to stay,” and the record supports the point. In United States v. Hemani, the justices held 9-0 that disarming someone solely because of occasional marijuana use violates the Second Amendment. A unanimous Court agreeing on a gun-rights outcome is a strong signal.
Even the internal disagreement stayed small. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a Hemani concurrence that she “continue[s] to believe that we veered off course in Bruen,” but only Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined her. No justice questioned Heller’s core holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. Barrett’s Wolford concurrence tightened the doctrine rather than loosening it.
That is the whole point. The durability of Heller, Bruen, and Wolford depends on the votes. Two justices want to revisit Bruen. Seven do not. Flip that ratio, and the entire structure becomes vulnerable.
How Court Packing Would Change the Math
This is where the political side enters. Adding seats to the Supreme Court and filling them with justices friendly to gun control would erase the majority that produced these decisions. There is no constitutional barrier to Congress changing the number of justices, which means a party controlling the presidency and Congress could raise it.
Randy Brooks, creator of the famous Barnes X Bullet and the 2016 NRA Golden Bullseye Pioneer Award winner, passed away peacefully on the morning of Aug. 27, 2026. The Brooks family believes Randy may have suffered a stroke. He had suffered mini-strokes in the past, and was recently diagnosed with vascular dementia. He was 77.
Randy grew up hunting and shooting in his native Utah, and in the 1970s began custom-loading ammunition to help support his young family. At the urging of friend Fred Barnes, founder of the namesake component bullet company, Randy and his wife, Coni, acquired what remained of the firm after new owners had allowed it to languish.
Soon they moved the business from Colorado to American Fork, Utah. The family’s basement became the company workshop, where Randy, Coni and their daughters, Chandra and Jessica, seated bullet cores in jackets. In 1985, while hunting brown bears in Alaska, the idea of a solid copper bullet took hold in him, so he returned home and went to work. Three years later, after much trial and error perfecting a manufacturing process with hand tools and machine tools, the X Bullet was born.
In 1989, the Barnes X immediately became the leader in epic knockdowns. Randy’s development of the new dangerous-game solid caught the attention of gunwriters, including NRA Publications Senior Field Editor Charles Askins, who wrote, “[L]et me assure you, these slugs really get the job done!”
Over the next two decades, Randy continued to improve the design. Today’s Barnes TSX and related variants are among the world’s most highly regarded and oft-imitated hunting bullets.
The Brooks sold the company to Remington Outdoor Company in 2010. Thereafter, Randy continued to develop new products, including the well-received Barnes VOR-TX loaded ammunition and new projectiles intended for military use. Today, Barnes Bullets is owned by Sierra Bullets of Sedalia, Mo., but X products, notably the Triple Shock X (TSX), are still made in Utah.
I met Randy Brooks at my first SHOT Show, in 1999. I saw the Barnes booth and the brown bear Randy took in Alaska that launched the solid copper revolution. I saw Randy standing next to that big bear in the Barnes booth and I just had to go in there and meet him.
I introduced myself, and Randy, ever-gracious, greeted me with a firm handshake, a smile and welcoming conversation. He was among the first pioneers of the shooting industry I ever met. I learned then and there to expect a smile every time I saw him.
Years later, I hunted deer and elk in Utah with him and Coni and others. We used the then-new Barnes MRX (to my mind the best hunting bullet ever made). It was Randy and Coni’s camp, but neither of them stood much on ceremony; they just wanted every hunter to go forth and prosper. The camp exuded graciousness, in large part because of Randy. He sidestepped some credit for creating the X Bullet when he told me, “You know, Fred Barnes had thought of the X. I found drawings he’d made among his stuff when we purchased the company—and when I did, I knew Fred was on to something. I just had to tinker a while till I got it right.” That word—“tinker”—explains Randy Brooks to a “T,” pardon the pun.
It was Randy Brooks’ tinkering that launched a legacy today every hunter knows as “unleaded, unfailing, unbeatable.”
Randy was married to Coni for 56 years and seven months. “He was my best friend, the love of my life, my business partner and partner in crime and fun,” she said. “He was a husband, father, grandfather, uncle, great-grandfather, friend, hunter, team roper and innovator. He loved animals especially his horses. He had a giving nature that is unsurpassed and wasn’t happy letting someone go without. He has given to family and friends and especially wildlife conservation. We have great wildlife in Utah in part due to his participation and willingness to give when needed.”
Randy Brooks was an accomplished big-game hunter, and he was particularly experienced with dangerous game in Alaska and Africa. He was a staunch supporter of the NRA and the freedoms protected by the Second Amendment. Though much of his success was attributed to lead-free bullets, he steadfastly refused to cooperate with anti-gun and media forces that repeatedly sought his validation for banning lead projectiles.
Randy Brooks’ X Bullet changed forever the expectations of big-game hunters regarding bullet terminal performance. As an Army veteran, he was proud that Barnes bullets served American troops and security officers worldwide. Today, Barnes products are highly trusted and respected among hunters and shooters worldwide.
For more than a century, infantry units have fought under an unforgiving reality: When you’re humping a ruck through non-cooperative terrain and you run face-first into an entrenched bunker, fortified machine-gun nest or enemy light armor, your options for immediate heavy fire support are painfully thin.
You can’t drag a 70-ton M1 Abrams through every swamp or up every mountain, and waiting on close air support or artillery when rounds are actively snapping over your head is a luxury combat rarely affords. The Army needed a vehicle that could cast a wider net without encountering the logistical hurdles of other direct-fire weapon systems. Enter the M10 Booker.
If you talk to Army leadership or defense acquisition officials, they will aggressively correct you if you call it a “light tank,” insisting on the clunky moniker of “Mobile Protected Firepower” (MPF).
Unfortunately for the brass, my capacity for bureaucratic red tape is pretty much non-existent, so let’s just call a spade a spade: it has tracks, a turret, heavy armor plating, and a 105mm cannon.
That sounds like a light tank to me. Whatever label the Pentagon wants to slap on the data plate doesn’t really matter to the Jimmys and Joes; it is a dedicated combat vehicle built to roll into Hell alongside the infantry and smash whatever is in their way.
Don’t get it twisted: the Booker is not designed to replace the Abrams in a kinetic slugfest against enemy heavy armored formations. Instead, it aims to solve a glaring operational vulnerability that has plagued American forces for generations.
It was designed to take the cutting-edge fire-control systems, lethal optics, and four-man crew philosophy of our frontline armor and pack it into an agile, sub-40-ton platform that can deploy rapidly to any theater on the globe.
Underneath its composite armor lies a modern, aggressive solution to an old-school problem, thus ensuring that when our forces cross the line of departure into the contested battlefields of tomorrow, they bring the undisputed master of direct-fire support with them. Unfortunately for the Pentagon, none of that would be sufficient to save this project from being shelved for the foreseeable future.
Ghosts of Armor Past: Humble Beginnings
To understand how the M10 Booker ended up on the chopping block, you have to look at the long, troubled lineage of American light armor that paved the way for its demise, starting with the M551 Sheridan.
Born during the Cold War and baptized in the jungles of Vietnam, the Sheridan was the Army’s attempt to give airborne and light units an air-droppable, aluminum-hulled scout vehicle packing the direct-fire punch of a 152mm gun/launcher. On paper, it was a dream; on the battlefield, it was a nightmare.
Unfortunately for the crewmen inside, the paper-thin armor made it a death trap against basic rocket-propelled grenades and landmines, while the finicky, caseless-ammunition gun system choked and sputtered in humid, combat-stressed environments.
When the Sheridan was retired without a direct replacement in the late 1990s, it left a massive, bleeding capability gap in the airborne and light infantry communities. The Pentagon would then spend the next 30 years desperately trying, and repeatedly failing, to fill that gap.
Once the Sheridan was relegated to the history books, the Army attempted a modern band-aid during the Global War on Terror with the Stryker Mobile Gun System (MGS). Slapping a low-profile 105mm tank cannon onto an 8×8 wheeled chassis seemed like the ideal compromise to give Stryker brigades rapid direct-fire capability. In reality, the vehicle was an absolute mechanical disaster.
The violent recoil of the 105mm blast constantly battered the wheeled platform’s suspension and drivetrain, and the notoriously complex autoloader choked on sand, dust and carbon at the worst possible moments. On top of that, firing the gun over the side can potentially tip the platform over on uneven terrain.
Maintaining the Stryker MGS became an unsustainable logistical nightmare for unit mechanics, and crew survivability against modern threats was practically non-existent. By the time the Army officially pulled the plug on the MGS in 2021, the exact same tactical void that plagued the post-Sheridan era was wide open once again.
Determined not to repeat the fragile mistakes of the Sheridan or the wheeled compromises of the Stryker MGS, the Army launched the Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) program. The goal seemed simple enough: build a rugged, tracked, direct-fire combat vehicle that could accompany light infantry into austere environments, survive real battlefield threats, and fit cleanly onto Air Force transport planes.
General Dynamics Land Systems secured the contract with a heavily modified Austrian-Spanish ASCOD chassis, eventually naming the platform the “M10 Booker” to honor WWII Medal of Honor recipient Pvt. Robert D. Booker and OIF Distinguished Service Cross recipient Staff Sgt. Stevon Booker.
Then, almost immediately, the classic curse of military acquisition set in. Requirements bloomed, composite armor was demanded, advanced active protection systems were needed, and heavier digital architectures were made a priority.
More requirements means more equipment, and more equipment means more weight. Serious weight. What started as an agile, expeditionary concept rapidly ballooned into a 42-ton heavyweight, planting the early seeds for the program’s eventual demise.
By the time the Booker was gearing up for fielding, the operational landscape had fundamentally changed underneath its tracks. The war in Ukraine and the explosion of cheap, lethal drone warfare forced the Pentagon to take a hard look at what it was actually buying. Spending millions of dollars on a 40+-ton manned vehicle that could no longer be dropped from a C-130 and barely fit into established strategic airlift was a tough pill to swallow.
On top of that, restrictive contractor maintenance agreements meant unit-level mechanics were pretty much locked out of fixing their own machines in the field. When Army leadership took an honest look at the shifting demands of Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO), the math simply did not add up anymore. Rather than dumping billions into a platform that had strayed far from its original expeditionary purpose, the Army pulled the plug, choosing to pivot toward lighter, uncrewed, and truly mobile future technologies.
Breaking Down the Booker: Armament and Optics
The primary feather in the Booker’s cap was its ability to deliver heavy, organic direct-fire capability directly to light units, and on paper, it packed plenty of heat. Its primary weapon was the 105mm M35 rifled cannon. While it lacked the sheer kinetic energy of the Abrams’ 120mm smoothbore, it was plenty sufficient for its intended purpose.
It was never designed to duel frontline enemy main battle tanks head-on. The 105mm was optimized to crack open concrete bunkers, eliminate fortified anti-tank missile positions, and shred light armored vehicles like Russian BMPs or Chinese infantry fighting vehicles.
The real strength of the Booker’s lethality came down to its digital guts. The Army directly ported over the advanced Fire Control System architecture from the M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams. They then paired the cannon with high-definition, third-generation Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) optics and the Safran PASEO Commander’s Independent Tactical Viewer (CITV).
This gave the four-man crew true hunter-killer capability, allowing the tank commander to acquire the next target while the gunner eliminated the current one.
Secondary armament mirrored standard American armor doctrine: an M240 7.62mm machine gun mounted coaxially next to the main gun, and Ol’ Reliable: the classic M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun operated at the commander’s hatch.
Surviving the Modern Battlespace
To keep the vehicle within a manageable weight class, General Dynamics built the Booker around a welded-steel hull augmented with modular composite armor packages. The baseline protection was rated to defeat heavy machine gun fire, while the frontal armor could withstand hits from modern autocannons and artillery fragmentation.
Internally, it borrowed proven safety features from the heavy armor community, including isolated ammunition stowage with blowout panels and automated fire suppression systems to protect the crew from catastrophic secondary explosions.
Unfortunately, survivability is where the fundamental contradiction that is the M10 Booker began to unravel. It lacked the dense depleted uranium composite armor of the Abrams, which means it’s still extremely vulnerable to modern anti-tank guided missiles and top-attack loitering munitions.
The Army attempted to solve this drawback by designing it to carry modular active protection systems, but every bolt-on countermeasure and extra steel plate added more and more weight. Soon, the vehicle was caught in a trap: it had become too heavily armored to be a nimble, air-droppable asset, but remained too lightly protected to survive on a modern battlefield saturated with suicide drones and heavy kinetic munitions.
Locomotion and Strategic Anchors
Propelling a 40-ton vehicle requires a massive amount of reliable power, and for the Booker, the Army opted for a front-mounted MTU 800-horsepower diesel engine mated to an Allison automatic transmission and a modern hydropneumatic suspension.
Putting the engine block in the front served a dual purpose: it acted as an extra physical shield for the crew in the turret and delivered significantly better fuel economy than the thirsty AGT1500 gas turbine in the Abrams. Across rough dirt and semi-restricted terrain, the Booker was remarkably agile, hitting speeds around 40 to 45 mph without breaking a sweat.
The problem wasn’t tactical mobility in the dirt; it was strategic mobility in the air. The original light armor dream was an asset you could roll out the back of a C-130 or air-drop directly onto an objective. At over 80,000 pounds, the Booker completely killed that dream. While the Air Force could technically cram two Bookers inside a massive C-17 Globemaster III, moving an entire battalion required an absurd amount of dedicated heavy strategic airlift. For an expeditionary force that prides itself on packing light and moving fast, the Booker ended up being a 40-ton anchor attached to their logistics chain.
The Human Element: Man vs Machine
When designing modern light combat vehicles, almost every foreign power opted for an automated loading system. Russia and China went all in on autoloaders to keep their vehicles small, light, and manned by just three crewmen. General Dynamics and the U.S. Army took the opposite approach, sticking firmly to the traditional four-man layout: Tank Commander, Gunner, Loader and Driver.
Keeping a human loader in the turret was one of the smartest theoretical calls on the platform. Beyond slamming 105mm rounds into the breech in seconds without complex mechanical linkages failing in dusty environments, that fourth crew member is pure strategic gold in the field.
Operating an armored vehicle is brutal, exhausting manual labor. When a tank throws track in deep mud, blows a hydraulic line, or needs 36 straight hours of continuous perimeter security pulled, a three-man crew burns out rapidly. Having an extra set of hands, eyes, and ears would give Booker crews the operational endurance that foreign platforms simply cannot match.
The Global Matchup: Light Armor on the World Stage
When looking at where the Booker sits on the global chessboard, the debate immediately runs into a massive wall of doctrinal confusion. The media and casual defense observers constantly tried to pit the Booker against heavy frontline main battle tanks like Russia’s T-90 or China’s Type 99.
Frankly, that comparison completely misses the point. Asking a 40-ton vehicle with a 105mm gun to trade blows with a 125mm heavy tank in an open field is a suicide mission. The Booker was built as an assault gun meant to support dismounted infantry and crush light armor, not duel heavy armor head-on.
The Eastern Rival: China’s Type 15 (VT-5)
One of the most honest Booker comparisons you can make is with China’s Type 15 light tank. Purpose-built for the brutal, oxygen-deprived elevations of the Tibetan Plateau and amphibious island-hopping campaigns, the Type 15 represents the exact opposite design philosophy of the Booker.
The Chinese opted for an aggressive, low-profile 36-ton vehicle powered by a 1,000-horsepower diesel engine, an autoloader, and a three-man crew. By cutting out the fourth crew member and relying on automated loading mechanisms, the Type 15 achieved an exceptional power-to-weight ratio tailored for high-altitude mountainous warfare where heavy armor literally cannot breathe.
However, that smaller silhouette comes with steep trade-offs. The automated ammunition carousel creates the exact same vulnerability seen in Russian armor, where a single penetrating hit detonates the onboard ammo and gives the crew an all-expenses-paid trip to the Turret Toss Olympics. Furthermore, the lack of a fourth crew member makes field maintenance and long-duration operations in harsh environments an absolute nightmare for Chinese crews.
Doctrinal Identity Crisis
The real problem for the M10 Booker wasn’t how it stacked up against the Type 15 on a spec sheet, it was that the U.S. Army never fully figured out what it actually wanted the vehicle to be.
The Chinese built the Type 15 for specific, non-negotiable terrain where an Abrams or Type 99 simply cannot physically drive due to weight and altitude restrictions. The U.S. Army, on the other hand, tried to turn the Booker into a do-it-all hybrid. They wanted it light enough for airborne and light infantry divisions, but armored enough to survive heavy fire.
The idea was to make it cheap and simple to maintain, while also loading it with proprietary contractor systems. In trying to build a vehicle that could satisfy every branch of combat arms at once, the military produced a compromised machine that ended up pleasing almost no one.
Ground Truth and the Final Verdict
Stepping into the turret of an M10 Booker is an experience full of contradictions. For any crewman who has spent years inside the cramped, deafening interior of an M1 Abrams, the Booker feels quite modern. The shared digital interfaces, crystal-clear FLIR thermal monitors, and familiar fire control hand grips make getting on target almost effortless. It handles like a dream in the mud, carving through tight turns and navigating wooded terrain where a main battle tank would instantly get bogged down
The reality inside the hatch is where the anxiety sets in. When you are sitting behind the controls of an Abrams, you know you are encased in depleted uranium composite armor designed to take a beating from the heaviest munitions on the planet and keep rolling. In the Booker, you are painfully aware of the thin steel and composite skin separating you from the outside world.
When you operate in close coordination with light infantry, you are naturally drawn into dense urban streets, choke points and tree lines. In modern warfare, those environments are absolute slaughterhouses, swarming with RPGs and cheap, deadly suicide drones. Operating a vehicle that looks and behaves like a tank, but cannot take a hit like a tank, demands a brand of hyper-vigilance that is mentally exhausting.
At the end of the day, the death of the M10 Booker is not the story of a catastrophic engineering failure. It is the classic story of development-creep running headfirst into the brutal reality of an evolving battlefield. It was a platform conceived during an era of counterinsurgency, designed to bridge a gap left behind by the Sheridan and the Stryker MGS, but finalized just in time to face a drone-saturated, near-peer operational environment that rendered its core concept obsolete.
You cannot fix an expeditionary mobility problem with a 40-ton vehicle, and you cannot survive modern multi-domain warfare with half-measures in armor. The Army’s decision to cancel the program before pouring tens of billions more into full-rate production may sting in the short term, but it stops the cycle of throwing good money after a flawed concept. The infantry’s dream of an organic, heavy direct-fire sledgehammer remains unfulfilled, but the lessons bought and paid for by the Booker will shape whatever machine takes its place on the firing line next.